Greeting of the Jewish Community in Washington, D.C. and
Message for Pesah

My dear friends,

I extend special greetings of peace to
the Jewish community in the United States
and throughout the world as you prepare to
celebrate the annual feast of Pesah. My
visit to this country has coincided with
this feast, allowing me to meet with you
personally and to assure you of my prayers
as you recall the signs and wonders God
performed in liberating his chosen people.
Motivated by our common spiritual heritage,
I am pleased to entrust to you this message
as a testimony to our hope centered on the
Almighty and his mercy.

Message for Pesah (Passover)

To the Jewish community on the Feast
of Pesah

My visit to the United States offers me
the occasion to extend a warm and heartfelt
greeting to my Jewish brothers and sisters
in this country and throughout the world. A
greeting that is all the more spiritually
intense because the great feast of Pesah is
approaching. "This day shall be for you a
memorial day, and you shall keep it as a
feast to the Lord; throughout your
generations you shall observe it as an
ordinance for ever" (Exodus 12: 14). While
the Christian celebration of Easter differs
in many ways from your celebration of Pesah,
we understand and experience it in
continuation with the biblical narrative of
the mighty works which the Lord accomplished
for his people.

At this time of your most solemn
celebration, I feel particularly close,
precisely because of what Nostra Aetate
calls Christians to remember always: that
the Church "received the revelation of the
Old Testament through the people with whom
God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the
Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that
she draws sustenance from the root of that
well-cultivated olive tree onto which have
been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles"
(Nostra Aetate, 4). In addressing myself to
you I wish to re-affirm the Second Vatican
Council's teaching on Catholic-Jewish
relations and reiterate the Church's
commitment to the dialogue that in the past
forty years has fundamentally changed our
relationship for the better.

Because of that growth in trust and
friendship, Christians and Jews can rejoice
together in the deep spiritual ethos of the
Passover, a memorial (zikkarôn) of freedom
and redemption. Each year, when we listen to
the Passover story we return to that blessed
night of liberation. This holy time of the
year should be a call to both our
communities to pursue justice, mercy,
solidarity with the stranger in the land,
with the widow and orphan, as Moses
commanded: "But you shall remember that you
were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God
redeemed you from there; therefore I command
you to do this" (Deuteronomy 24: 18).

At the Passover Sèder you recall the holy
patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the
holy women of Israel, Sarah, Rebecca,
Rachael and Leah, the beginning of the long
line of sons and daughters of the Covenant.
With the passing of time the Covenant
assumes an ever more universal value, as the
promise made to Abraham takes form: "I will
bless you and make your name great, so that
you will be a blessing... All the
communities of the earth shall find blessing
in you" (Genesis 12: 2-3). Indeed, according
to the prophet Isaiah, the hope of
redemption extends to the whole of humanity:
"Many peoples will come and say: 'Come, let
us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the
house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach
us his ways and that we may walk in his
paths'" (Isaiah 2: 3). Within this
eschatological horizon is offered a real
prospect of universal brotherhood on the
path of justice and peace, preparing the way
of the Lord (cf. Isaiah 62: 10).

Christians and Jews share this hope; we
are in fact, as the prophets say, "prisoners
of hope" (Zachariah 9: 12). This bond
permits us Christians to celebrate alongside
you, though in our own way, the Passover of
Christ's death and resurrection, which we
see as inseparable from your own, for Jesus
himself said: "salvation is from the Jews"
(John 4: 22). Our Easter and your Pesah,
while distinct and different, unite us in
our common hope centered on God and his
mercy. They urge us to cooperate with each
other and with all men and women of goodwill
to make this a better world for all as we
await the fulfillment of God's promises.

With respect and friendship, I therefore
ask the Jewish community to accept my Pesah
greeting in a spirit of openness to the real
possibilities of cooperation which we see
before us as we contemplate the urgent needs
of our world, and as we look with compassion
upon the sufferings of millions of our
brothers and sisters everywhere. Naturally,
our shared hope for peace in the world
embraces the Middle East and the Holy Land
in particular. May the memory of God's
mercies, which Jews and Christians celebrate
at this festive time, inspire all those
responsible for the future of that
region-where the events surrounding God's
revelation actually took place-to new
efforts, and especially to new attitudes and
a new purification of hearts!